In the age of AI and cyber livelihoods that we are unwittingly rushing into, political influencing is taking on a digital, dark and dubiously democratised shade. Recently, Tamil Nadu’s deputy Chief Minister & DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin found himself amid a controversy after his Instagram handle reposted pictures of a woman model.

Deleted immediately, but the damage was done. Corrosive derision followed, unfurled by all opposition parties but led from the front by the virtual warriors of Vijay’s TVK. In the acrid cacophony, an unintended victim – about whom nobody seemed to care – was the model who got caught in the crossfire. This is not the first time that a woman found herself wrangled by political virtual warriors, and not the first time nobody glanced........

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